


Ani-Bitty

by Memori_wanderis



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Crack, Canon-typical swearing, Gen, Hockey Scouts, Humor, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Magical Boys, Parody, Weirdness, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 18:46:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11538243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Memori_wanderis/pseuds/Memori_wanderis
Summary: This is a one-shot crack fic I wrote, I blame such shows as Cute High Earth Defense Club for this one.





	Ani-Bitty

It was just sweat, Eric thought as he jolted awake in his bed. His hand brushed against his forehead, feeling the slickness. Just sweat. He still patted the mattress underneath him, just to be sure. Dry. The gust of relieved breath escaping his mouth made him realize he was holding his breath.

"Calm down, Eric," he whispered to himself. "It's just nerves. Just nerves, because..." He looked at the clock. Five thirty-six A.M. Five thirty-six A.M. today. August 12th.

Today. The day he leaves Georgia to become a Samwell University Freshman. It was a few weeks before classes begin, not to mention Freshman Orientation, but he's on a hockey scholarship, and since a bunch of athletic teams start their pre-season tomorrow, they get to move in early. He'd heard nightmare stories from high school friends who had graduated before him about the chaos of moving in along with the entire school on the same day, and he thanked whatever powers were listening that he got to avoid that.

Now, if only those same powers could do something about those weird dreams. The ones that seemed to start the day he officially registered for Samwell. They didn't happen every night, but they occurred often enough that Eric Richard Bittle self-analyzed them to just pre-College nerves. It's just nerves. New environment, new people, about a thousand miles away from home. All Freshmen get them, right? 

Right?

The memories of these dreams tended to fade quickly. Every so often, however, he could remember flashes: A hockey goalie mask, blinding flashed of light, crossed hockey sticks. And water. They always ended with him falling into water, and someone asking on the edge of his hearing "Help me."

It wasn't a voice Eric knew; there was no familiar Southern drawl to it. It's not like he had friends outside of Madison. Yet.

After all, today's the day.

Still, the fading dreams unnerved him. Perhaps Freshman get pre-college jitters. But recurring dreams or nightmares? Definitely not routine.

Eric let out another breath, and hauled himself off of his bed. He rolled his neck around to get the kinks out and left the room. He needed a shower, like, now.

***

The essentials were unpacked, first. His bedclothes, Senor Bun, and his laptop. The rest, stacked in cardboard boxes in a corner of the room, could wait. Eric was here. Samwell. He was finally here. 

His dorm was mostly empty, or at least his floor was. It seemed like there weren't any other pre-season athletes living nearby, and Eric was still undecided if that was a good or bad thing. He could use the chance to socialize (after all, Hockey first skate wasn't until tomorrow), but...

Eric knew what he was like. Those same mannerisms and behaviors that made him a bully target in school weren't going away; if they didn't accept him, screw them. Still, while Samwell boasted one of the highest LGBTQ student population percentages in the country, he knew it wouldn't be everybody. There would still be bigots. There always was.

So Eric found himself between wanting to talk to people, and wanting to avoid them until he was sure Samwell Freshman Year wouldn't just be a repeat of the last twelve or thirteen years of his life before now.

In the meantime, there were priorities. And now that he was unpacked (the essentials, of course), he had to tell his vlog viewers about this because the campus was beautiful. And the student kitchens were open.

Like he said: essentials.

It was after the familiar whirring noise of his laptop on startup sounded that Eric heard a tapping (just a tapping) at his dorm room door. He blinked, and turned towards the closed door. Was that a knock?

Another rapid tapping, this one more insistent, rattled through door as a small voice said, "Hey! Let me in! Quick!"

To Eric, it sounded like someone in distress. But why him? What could he do? Still, he wasn't going to just ignore someone asking for help.

There was no one there when he opened the door. Eric's curious look twisted to a frown in record time. 

"Ding-Dong Ditch? Really? In college? Y'all have to at least upgrade to a flaming bag of dog poop if you want to make me feel more at ho-!"

"Hey!" the voice called. "I'm down here!"

Eric didn't expect to find anyone around shorter than his five-foot-six-and-a-half (and the half was Very Important, by the way; every little bit helps), but he was ill-prepared for the sight before him.

Trailing drops of water to the door of his dorm room was a rounded fish bowl. Leaning out of the bowl on its elbows...or where its' fins would have elbows Eric supposed, was a small, teal-colored sea creature. Sleek body (all eight inches of it), dorsal fin, wide mouth.

Eric's shock was enough that he didn't even have the presence of mind to recoil. His reaction was dumbed down to a very flat "What."

"Eric Bittle! Finally! I have been waiting for you!" The...talking shark edged against its' bowl to nudge it slowly through Eric's doorway, water droplets flying through its efforts. "Let me in before someone sees us; we have to talk."

"WHAT."

"You said that already."

"No. No no no," Eric replied, absently jabbing his thumbnail into his thigh. Wake up. Wake UP! He had to be dreaming this. Or what if he was hallucinating? College kids did drugs, yeah, but he...what if someone i doing drugs now and he's smelling it? What if it's acid? Do college kids even do acid? "What are you?"

"I'm a shark! Rarr!" The creature waved it's fins around. At that size, its' intimidation factor was pretty low. "Rarr! I'm scary!"

"You're...talking." Eric's brain was stuck in neutral-what-is-my-life-right-now. 

"Good. Your ears work. Let's try this. Please. Let. Me. In."

"You're adorable."

"No!" the shark exclaimed, protesting. "I'm a shark! I'm fierce! Rarr!" It's mouth opened wider. "See? Teeth! Lots of scary sharp teeth!"

"But you have braces."

"Still sharp!"

"Why does a talking shark have braces?"

"Longer story. But I gotta get you to just the long story first, Eric."

Eric's muscles wouldn't move. Of course, he wasn't sure he was about to scream, or run screaming, or curl up into a fetal ball screaming, or find the nearest psychiatrist screaming. The screaming impulse was definitely there, he knew.

"Please, Eric," the shark, colored as no shark in nature should be, said. "You gotta help me."

Help me...

The dreams...what.

That was enough to get Eric to finally pick up the fish bowl, carrying it to his desk after using his foot to slam the door behind him. 

"Now, wait," Eric said, trying to get some semblance of self back. The sight of a talking shark did some nasty things to his sentience. He closed his eyes, trying to force his brain not to shut down. 

"Wait," Eric said again. "This is about those dreams, isn't it?"

"Oh good," the shark sighed. "You heard those. I was calling for help." The sharked turned in its bowl so it was leaning on the lip to face Eric, who had bonelessly collapsed to sit on his bed. His hand absently reached for Senor Bun. Senor Bun was a constant. Senor Bun was real. Always real. He wasn't sure about the rest of this precise moment in space-time, but...

"I know this seems weird-" the shark continued. 

"Doesn't 'seem' imply 'doubt?'" Eric retorted. "I have a tiny braces-wearing blue-green shark talking to me right now. Hey, wait, aren't sharks supposed to keep swimming or they die?"

"I'm kind of a special case."

"How?"

"That's the longer story. And there'll be time for that later," answered the shark. "I sent those dreams because you're...you're you, Eric. You're supposed to be here. We've been waiting?"

"We?"

"You'll find out in a bit."

"And telling me now would be a problem because?" Eric found himself folding his arms. The shark was being terribly mysterious (tm), which was never something that sat well with the Georgia boy. 

"I'm getting to that," the shark replied. "See, you're a member of the Samwell Hockey Team. You were chosen. That's why you're here."

"Well, yeah," Eric said. "I have a scholarship." Is this some kind of hazing prank, Eric wondered. So animatronics? Outrageous holograms? He could have sworn the team mascot was a well.

"Oh, you earned that scholarship. It's just...well, you're a part of the Team." Eric could hear the capital T in the shark's words. "It means more than you realize, right now?"

"What?"

"There are dark forces at work here, Eric Bittle," the shark intoned. Or, at lease it tried to intone; the youthful chipper voice and braces didn't really function well when it came to intoning. "And the Team is the only defense against it."

At a total loss, Eric just stared.

"We've been waiting for you, like I said. You're the new member of the Team!" The shark perked up. "Oh, right! You're going to need this!" The shark closed its' mouth, and its' body bulged. Small noises erupted from it, like it was...gagging? Eric's eyelid twitched. Did the shark need the Heimlich? Do sharks even have a gag reflex? Eric knew he still did, which still made him feel like the Worst Gay Ever.

Focus, Eric, Focus!

Eric stood up just as the shark's mouth opened, expelling something long and wooden onto the floor of Eric's room.

A hockey stick. It looked brand new; the wood was shining, the tape was intact in a color that reminded Eric of the freshest Georgia peaches from back home, and the whole thing was glowing. 

"Where did-?"

"Don't," the shark warned. "Don't ask questions you really don't want to know the answer to."

The shark had him there. "Fair enough," Eric said. "But it's a hockey stick. I already have one."

"But this one is yours," the shark countered. Eric could hear the italics in that one word. "Take it. When the time comes, you'll know what to do."

As if he were hypnotized, Eric picked up the stick. It seemed to be the perfect size for a hockey player of his stature, and feather-light in his hands. 

"Do." Eric struggled for words. "Do you have a name? Sharkey?" He tilted his head a little to regard the braces. "Metallica?"

"Oh, gosh, haven't heard those before." The shark sighed. "Folks just call me Chowder."

"Chowder," Eric echoed. "Because why not."

"So," Eric continued. "What's all this ab-!"

His questions were halted by the ground suddenly shaking, accompanied a noise like a John Deere trying to tractor over the entire world. Was it late? Was the sun setting? Why was it getting dark all of a sudden?

"Oh man!" Chowder said. "We're out of time. Crash course for you, Bittle!" He waves a frantic fin. "Take the stick! You'll know what to do?"

As Eric looked down at the new hockey stick, it started to radiate light. The light itself felt familiar: the light from his recurring strange dreams. Words appeared in his mind, and his mouth started to form them before Eric realized it was happening.

Eric's right hand began to twirl the hockey stick like a baton, and he pivoted on one foot in a practiced motion honed from years in training for the Ice Skating Regionals before he had to move to Madison. The words came unbidden to his lips as his revolutions came to a stop.

"Samwell...Team..." Eric slammed the taper of the stick against the ground. "Face-Off!"

Eric didn't even register that the stick didn't snap in two when he struck the ground, because he felt himself enveloped by a blinding peach-colored light. He felt warm, naked, and the wind whipped around as he felt himself spinning rapidly. 

"Hockey Bro...Peach!" he shouted, again without realizing it, when he came to a stop. He happened to stop in front of the full-length mirror on the back of his door, startled at what looked back at him.

Eric was in a kind of stylized hockey uniform. Definitely not regulation. Red and white in color, with peach-colored piping along the trousers, and around the high collar and cuffs. There was protective padding, without bulk and seeming to fit Eric like an extra layer of skin. The helmet was the same yellow-pink in color, with a clear visor in front of his eyes and a gridded face-guard covering the rest. 

"Oh my land," he muttered. 

"No time!" Chowder called. Eric's window suddenly opened, the air seeming to pull him towards it. "Get out there and help!"

Eric hurtled out of the window, seeming to float or fly across the open air. He should have fallen to his death, but this...weird glowing hockey power was keeping him up. 

From this height, Eric...or Hockey Bro Peach, could see what was causing chaos. A huge hole has erupted in the earth on campus, like a volcano had formed. Instead of lava, a huge mole-like creature flowed from the edge, screeching in unintelligent rage. If Eric had to hazard a guess, saying it was twenty feet high might be low-balling it.

At the base of the mound, however, was a further shock to Eric. Three others, wearing similar uniforms to his. And they were huge! The one in the red-highlighted uniform had to be six-foot-four, at least. The remaining ones, in blue-edged and green-edged uniforms, seemed to only be shorter by an inch or two.

He was supposed to help them? What could he do? Be squashed like a little baking-addicted superhero bug while they saved the day?

He was going to die. He wasn't even totally unpacked yet! How was this in any way fair?

The Samwell University Brochure had nothing, NOTHING about this.

Oh, the days when he thought it was all just pre-college jitters.

Eric touched down a few feet behind the others. "What is that thing?"

The first response was three huge guys holding glowing sticks (with tape colors matching the edging on their uniforms) turning around sharply, as if ready to strike. They stopped short at the sight of the small hero, and the one in green let out a joyous whoop.

"Oh fuck yes!" Green said, and Eric could see a very impressive porn-star-level chocolate moustache behind the face guard. "We have our other Forward! Chowder found you thank Fuckin' Christ."

"But...but..."

"Ah, no time to explain, brah," Green said, Bostonian-accented. "What's your name?"

"Eric Bittle," he said. "I mean...um...Hockey Bro Peach?"

"Like Georgia Peaches!" said Red, who was the big guy Eric notices earlier. "With that accent," he added. "And about the same size right, Rans?" Red turned to Blue, whose teeth shone in contract to the dark skin Eric could see.

"I'm Hockey Bro Green," said the one. "Or Shitty, either works. I'm another Forward. These two lunks are our D-Men, Holster and Ransom. And you're Bitty. Welcome to the team."

The mole-creature was coming closer. Yep, Eric thought. Twenty feet was definitely low-balling it. "I'm gonna die."

"Hell no," Red, or Holster said, "We watch each other's backs. This is just a run-of-the-mill Underbeast."

"You've...fought it before?"

"Not this specific one," Random, also called Hockey Bro Blue. "But it usually happens...oh, about once a week. Sometimes they take a hiatus, or we get like fill-in monsters for a while before they start up again."

"How considerate of them, bless their hearts," Eric muttered.

"Oh I fucking like you already," Shitty said. "But let's show 'em what we got!" The green-clad team member sped forward, gliding along the ground as if he were skating. That was when Eric finally realized they were all on hockey skates. Since they were floating, no one lost their balance on hard ground and snapped their ankle. That was nice of them to think of that, Eric thought.

Green lifted his stick as he closed in on the mole creature. "Forward Green Justice Crease!" he shouted and a green arc of light winged off from where Shitty swung his stick. The green energy hit the mole creature, and plants rapidly emerged from the ground, enveloping the mole-monster and wrapping around its stubby legs. Green...five-leaved plants. 

"Is..." Eric trailed off. "Is that-?"

"Yep," Shitty said with a wicked grin. "And you're the newbie, so you're on harvest duty when we're done. That's amazing shit."

Before Eric could even begin to register the reply to that and form one of his own, the monster broke it's illegal-in-most-stated bonds with a roar. A sweeping claw sent a cascade of broken earth and dirt over the Hockey Bros, cutting small gashes where they sped through the spaces in the face grids. Eric was thankful for the full visors; someone could have lost an eye.

"Oh crap," Blue said. "We need to slow it down."

At that moment, from off to Eric's left side, three radiant hockey pucks slammed into the space right between the mole-creatures eyes, stunning it.

Eric looked to the side, and up. Standing on top of one of the three-floor dorms was a tall figure. Unlike the Bros uniforms, this guy's uniform was mostly black, with white piping and highlights. The back of his shirt seemed to extend into a pair of tails, link on a fancy tux. Instead of a helmet, Eric could see brown hair framing a white goalie mask. And for a brief second, Eric saw a pair of piercing pale blue eyes regarding him with a dismissive curiosity.

Shitty gasped. 

"Guys," Peach asked in a low voice. "Is he on our side?"

"It's the Masked Captain!" Shitty replied. "No one knows who he is, but he comes in to help, sometimes."

And with a jump, the Mask Captain disappeared.

"Throws some pucks then disappears."

"What the fuck is this place," Eric asked. Great, Green was rubbing off on him already.

"Later," Holster said. "Our turn."

Bros Red and Blue grinned at each other, slamming their sticks together before gliding off in opposite directions. Light seemed to trail from each of them as they circled around the stunned mole-thing, before coming in at a diagonal from each side.

"D-Men Purple Cross Check!"

The light trails from Red and Blue's movement and impact formed a bright violet X over the monster, which reeled from the assault. 

Eric felt a pushing urge in his brain, and he could feel the energy connection between the center of his chest and the hockey stick in his hand. 

"I...I think I got this," Hock Bro Peach said, his stick lifting from centrifugal force as he started to spin. Just like ice dancing, he thought. As he spun faster, his whole body seemed to pulse with that pink-yellow light, which coalesced into an orb on the blade of his stick. 

"Forward...Peach...Slap-Shot!"

The ball of peach light rocketed towards the mole creature, and engulfed it on impact, causing the Bros to avert their eyes. When the light faded, Eric could see a wisp of shadow-like smoke disperse on the wind, right above a quivering, stunned, ordinary-sized mole.

Eric felt an arm slam around his shoulders as two others careened into him. "Bitty!" Shitty said. "Way to go! That was a clutch fucking shot. You are so going first at the victory kegster tonight!"

"Huh?"

"Oh, wait til you see the Haus!" Ransom said. "It's what we call our base?"

A house?

"Is there a kitchen?"

The trio of curious looks focused Eric's way at the question was interrupted by a sloshing sound. Chowder the talking teal shark was hobbling his fish bowl towards the group.

"See! I told you that you were supposed to be here, Peach! Nice job!"

"I'm not done yet," Eric said as the other Bros gave him room to breathe. "I've still got..." He looked towards the mount of Green's created plants. "Harvesting duty." Good Lord how were they not all in jail?

He moved to pick up the fish bowl. "And while I do so, Sweet little Chowder," he said, ignoring the 'Fierce! Rarr!' protest from the shark. "You're going to explain everything. The long and longer versions."

"You got it! Welcome to the team."

"Though," Eric said, curiously. "If you're going for the longer version, shouldn't you be a deer?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind, honey." Eric smiled, carrying the fishbowl off. "I'm listening."

***

Elsewhere, the same scene was being watched in the rippling waters in a scrying font made from a huge silver tiered cup. 

"Interesting," said the figure viewing the scene. "We have a new challenger, it would seem. It would have been a short challenge too if not for that accursed Masked Captain." His hate for the Bros was large, but nothing compared to their mysterious masked ally.

"Still, no matter," he said, turning from the Stanley Font. "Winning is inevitable. Winning is everything."

He was clad head to toe in black and white, much like the uniforms of the Bros, but more angular, sharper. His face was covered by a Spade, like the Ace of Spades from a deck of cards, the tip of which was covered by a fringe of blond hair. White teeth shone from the darkness of the facial tattoo.

"Attend me, my Aces!" he cried. Two rings on his fingers, each the same silver design with a gem in the center (one dark blue, one light brown) glimmered with internal light.

At the glimmering, two figures emerged from the surrounding darkness. One was dark-skinned and dark-haired, with blue eyes matching the gem on the Spade's right on his right hand. His full-face tattoo was of a red heart. The other had short red hair and a diamond face tattoo. His light brown eyes matched the gem on the other ring.

Their movements were slow, almost forced, as if they wished to move, or be, elsewhere.

"It seems, Heart-Ace, Diamond-Ace, that our wayward little Club has found a new soldier for his little...rebellion." Spade snorted. "I can almost hear him now. Whine whine whine save my friends, moan moan moan stop the forces of evil, whine whine whine help me get my human form back." Spade-Ace rolled his eyes contemptuously. "Still, this is no time to rest. This just means we need to up our game. Keep those...bush-league Hockey Bros on their toes. Wear them down until we take them out once for all!" Cold gray eyes glinted. "We have work to do."

Heart and Diamond looked up, eyes glazed over. "Yes, Ace-Parson," they replied, in hypnotic unison."

-Fin-


End file.
